Teacher’s Design of Practical Work

Abstract

Much research has been done on the effectiveness of practical work in the classroom. Studies conclude that the way most teachers apply practical work is not the most effective approach. Some studies ascribe this at least in part to the very design of the practical work. This research project aims to answer the question ‘What design principles do teachers use when designing practical work?’ The research method comprised of structured interviews with 15 active teachers and teacher educators in the Netherlands about the design process of a particular piece of practical work. Interviews were guided by the Practical Activity Analysis Inventory (Millar 2009). Results show remarkable consistency amongst the ways in which teachers design practical work for students in some aspects and clear differences in others. Most teachers indicate that learning activities associated with the domain of ideas play a more significant role in their design than activities exclusively associated with the domain of observables (Abrahams and Millar 2008). Likewise most teachers take great care to provide an appropriate degree of scaffolding, but they differ considerably in their view how much and which scaffolding should be provided. Clear differences arise when considering learning objectives. Few teachers rigorously use learning objectives throughout the design of the activity. In most design processes they only play a marginal role. This holds even more for inquiry objectives. Sometimes these are not even recognized by the designer, even though inquiry activities were—unconsciously—included in the activity created. The results of this study can be useful to identify why so much practical work is ineffective. It seems that the problem does not lie in the primary design-objectives of the practical work, at least when considering experienced teachers. They take great care to enable the student to get to the domain of ideas, although they may lack a solid understanding of what is necessary to get their students there in terms of scaffolding. This study did not look at classroom-implementation, so it may be that the teacher puts less emphasis on the scientific ideas when doing the activity in class. Further research will look into this and identify reasons for possible discrepancies between design-principles and execution in class.